


Halfway

by fmo



Series: Bucky moments [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, mention of Bucky's experiences in the Hydra lab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1320259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halfway between the Hydra base and the American camp, the escapees stop to rest. In the morning light, Bucky comes to terms with the events of the night before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halfway

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Halfway](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804966) by [SummerNap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerNap/pseuds/SummerNap)



Bucky comes to himself slowly and realizes that there’s earth under his cheek. He’s lying on grass.

He feels like he has a killer hangover, but he doesn’t think he was drinking. In those first instants of wakefulness, he feels strangely light: just a man lying down on the ground. Then the sun peers through the treetops overhead and all of his history washes over him like a wave: James Barnes. Bucky. Brooklyn. Steve. The Army, the Hydra base. The jail cell with the other men. The lab. 

He closes his eyes as that past part of himself returns. The him who screamed on the table, who, in the end, found that nothing was enough to cling to in that room, at the very edge of what a human being can endure. In the distance, he hears birds chattering.

Did he leap over a river of fire? Did Steve—Steve, who turned out to be Captain America after all?

Bucky slowly raises his head, and just then he hears Steve close by saying his name. “Bucky!”

Bucky sits up, blinks, looks at him. It’s Steve, all right, wearing a leather jacket over a Captain America costume, topped with a blue helmet with dangling straps that flap as Steve turns and make him look like a cheerful basset hound. Steve is the Steve from last night’s fevered memories, broad-shouldered and carrying a shield.

“Bucky, you okay?” Steve says again with concern, kneeling next to him. “You were out for a while. A lot of the guys were, but I figured you needed it. We kept watch.”

A breeze blows against Bucky’s cheek; he realizes that he has a cut there, because it smarts. He looks around to see that between the trees they’re surrounded by Allied soldiers chattering in a handful of languages, sitting on the ground, tending to one another’s injuries. They’re in a forest somewhere, but the trees are sparse and the ground is mostly bare. It looks like late morning.

He turns again to look at Steve. Not a fever dream, but really Steve, his friend, taking off the helmet now to let his sweat-stiffened hair fall over his forehead. Of course Steve is Captain America: that mouth, that nose, those long eyelashes. He remembers how those hands broke the buckles that were holding him down. Steve’s hands.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Bucky says. “Contract work, huh?”

Steve smiles, the corners of his mouth turning down a little because he doesn’t want to be too boastful about it. Then he glances up again. “We ought to keep moving. I’d like us to reach the base by afternoon. It’s six more hours if we can keep going straight.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Sure,” he says. “Piece of cake.”


End file.
